Regarded by many as the finest, and funniest, comic novel of the twentieth century, Lucky Jim remains as trenchant, withering, and eloquently misanthropic as when it first scandalized readers in 1954. This is the story of Jim Dixon, a hapless lecturer in medieval history at a provincial... show more

Regarded by many as the finest, and funniest, comic novel of the twentieth century, Lucky Jim remains as trenchant, withering, and eloquently misanthropic as when it first scandalized readers in 1954. This is the story of Jim Dixon, a hapless lecturer in medieval history at a provincial university who knows better than most that “there was no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones.” Kingsley Amis’s scabrous debut leads the reader through a gallery of emphatically English bores, cranks, frauds, and neurotics with whom Dixon must contend in one way or another in order to hold on to his cushy academic perch and win the girl of his fancy. More than just a merciless satire of cloistered college life and stuffy postwar manners, Lucky Jim is an attack on the forces of boredom, whatever form they may take, and a work of art that at once distills and extends an entire tradition of English comic writing, from Fielding and Dickens through Wodehouse and Waugh. As Christopher Hitchens has written, “If you can picture Bertie or Jeeves being capable of actual malice, and simultaneously imagine Evelyn Waugh forgetting about original sin, you have the combination of innocence and experience that makes this short romp so imperishable.”

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I tend to be very unfair to comic (humorous) novels, I have this unreasonable demand that every page makes me laugh. Quite a tall order for the poor authors I think, but I can’t help it, so I generally avoid reading comic novels. I stumbled upon an audiobook of Lucky Jim on Youtube and thought I’d g...

This is a laugh-out-loud novel about what it's like to feel like a fraud teaching at a university (something I can sort of relate to) while you hate your (sort of girlfriend), hate your boss, hate your subject matter and generally hate your life - and that hate manifests itself in you screwing every...

I was scrolling through Wordpress reading articles and reviews at work, when I got an IM from the woman next to me. She asks if I've read that book. I had no idea what she was talking about. She said she'd been peaking over my shoulder and saw Lucky Jim pop up. When I told her I had not, she went on...

This was an enjoyable read, though at times I was unsure whether the protagonist was actually someone the reader was meant to identify with. It struck me as a "Confederacy of Dunces" for the post-war, British set.

I wish I could hide behind some papers at a faculty assembly and make my Martian Invader face, or close the door to my office after some event of special academic absurdity and leap about in an ape imitation as private commentary. Lucky Jim is dangerous reading for an underpaid college lecturer. His...

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